Windows Cairo is the second generation of Windows NT…the first Microsoft operating system that realizes the “Information at Your Fingertips” vision. –Windows Cairo product planning document
Reading about Cairo is triggering Longhorn PTSD in me. Finally having some understanding of Cairo means I am now even more astonished at the mistakes made during Longhorn.
It’s interesting to learn that Cairo was a wholly distinct operating system from NT. Not being at MSFT at the time, it seemed from the outside (reading trade press) that Cairo was the next version of NT. If it was a third OS group as you write here, was it building from scratch (kernel, etc)?
"the realization that the existing code could be made to work fine and new code brought with it new problems."
This anecdote from Word 1.0 (as well as the words "modern, robust, refined") seems to be yet another instance of a story I've seen played out many times. It sounds like Cairo had this to some extent too. This is not to say that such efforts can't pay off, but I've always wondered why such efforts get the attention and resourcing they do, given the high risk of new issues and overall low historical success (at least from what I've seen).
Do you have any thoughts about how to take a more critical look at such initiatives and how to decide whether such things are worth it or not? It seems that too often, predictable issues with this approach are ignored for too long, leading to frustration and demoralization that seem mostly avoidable. OTOH it's also hard to not assume good intent at the time and realize what was misguided in hindsight.
I'm curious about something that took place during your TA time with BillG, i.e., "during late-1992 to mid-1994." I'd love to hear what your involvement, if any, was around the following.
I was running product development at Stac at the time, shipping the Stacker disk compression product. We sued Microsoft in early 1993 for infringement of two of our lossless data compression patents over Microsoft's DoubleSpace disk compression feature in MS-DOS 6. The case went to trial in early 1994. We prevailed in our case, while Microsoft countersued us for trade secret misappropriation and also prevailed. No doubt that we were a nuisance to MS for this as we had been granted a pretty broad injunction that prevented OEMs from shipping any product that included DoubleSpace. We ultimately entered into a settlement agreement with Microsoft in mid-1994. It seemed to be at the early stages of Microsoft's patent awareness (as you noted in an earlier chapter).
It's ancient history at this point, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks for these excellent chapters. I'm recalling devouring the trade press of those days.
Reading about Cairo is triggering Longhorn PTSD in me. Finally having some understanding of Cairo means I am now even more astonished at the mistakes made during Longhorn.
Cairo can be a whole book by itself and a most fascinating one if it covers not just the technical topics but also human ones.
It’s interesting to learn that Cairo was a wholly distinct operating system from NT. Not being at MSFT at the time, it seemed from the outside (reading trade press) that Cairo was the next version of NT. If it was a third OS group as you write here, was it building from scratch (kernel, etc)?
"the realization that the existing code could be made to work fine and new code brought with it new problems."
This anecdote from Word 1.0 (as well as the words "modern, robust, refined") seems to be yet another instance of a story I've seen played out many times. It sounds like Cairo had this to some extent too. This is not to say that such efforts can't pay off, but I've always wondered why such efforts get the attention and resourcing they do, given the high risk of new issues and overall low historical success (at least from what I've seen).
Do you have any thoughts about how to take a more critical look at such initiatives and how to decide whether such things are worth it or not? It seems that too often, predictable issues with this approach are ignored for too long, leading to frustration and demoralization that seem mostly avoidable. OTOH it's also hard to not assume good intent at the time and realize what was misguided in hindsight.
I'm curious about something that took place during your TA time with BillG, i.e., "during late-1992 to mid-1994." I'd love to hear what your involvement, if any, was around the following.
I was running product development at Stac at the time, shipping the Stacker disk compression product. We sued Microsoft in early 1993 for infringement of two of our lossless data compression patents over Microsoft's DoubleSpace disk compression feature in MS-DOS 6. The case went to trial in early 1994. We prevailed in our case, while Microsoft countersued us for trade secret misappropriation and also prevailed. No doubt that we were a nuisance to MS for this as we had been granted a pretty broad injunction that prevented OEMs from shipping any product that included DoubleSpace. We ultimately entered into a settlement agreement with Microsoft in mid-1994. It seemed to be at the early stages of Microsoft's patent awareness (as you noted in an earlier chapter).
It's ancient history at this point, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
Thanks for these excellent chapters. I'm recalling devouring the trade press of those days.